Saturday, December 03, 2011

It was the day before Thanksgiving and Jay and I had split up kid duty for the day. I worked in the morning and Jay brought the kids to our noon communion service for the handoff.

When we all got eventually got home in the afternoon, I flopped on the bed to veg for a minute. Then I heard the goats, which was strange, because they're normally very quiet. After hearing them off and on for awhile, I decided to look out the window and see what was happening. This is what was happening

Sweet Elizabeth was giving birth while I was hanging out on my bed for a rest. We waited around, thinking that there might be another, but after awhile she birthed the placenta and we figured that the show was over.

We suspected that she might be pregnant when we got her, but because she was only carrying one, she didn't get as big as we assumed she would.

After the birth, we watched intently to see what would happen next. Dear Elizabeth licked that slimy thing for about five hours, trying to clean it off and get it to stand up. It finally stood up and we all cheered. Then we watched to make sure it would nurse. It didn't until the next day, which made us (mostly me) a little nervous, but things seemed to be going fine.

The baby spent Thanksgiving Day testing out her new legs, which are surprisingly long relative to the rest of her body. As my dad and I were watching her, she randomly starting hopping. Not around anything, not over anything. Just because. So we named her Hop.

Joshua has lobbied to change her name to Hope since that sounds prettier with Elizabeth and Lucy. We all finally gave in, because it just seems right seeing that she was born just before Advent.